Woah, it’s been 18 days since the last update! I’m going to try some more formatting stuff, we’ll see how it goes.
Labyrinth devlog, update 14:
UI
Anyone who’s been following this devlog lately saw the beginnings of a minimap in the last update. Lots of aesthetic improvements have been made since then: the minimap now expands into an overlay which helps to make the tiles more visible. Since the beginning of development, I’ve been planning to implement ‘earthquakes’ which rearrange parts of the map to make navigation a little more challenging; earthquakes will most likely clear the minimap to add to the effect.
Boss fights
In the beginning of development I threw together a (sort of) boss enemy as practice to get used to Defold’s scripting system; I made a second pass on that and created the first true boss fight for Labyrinth.
From a physics perspective, the boss is pretty simple; it hovers around the room, drifting towards the player, and occasionally drops down to attack. The boss only does twenty damage on contact, after testing is done that’ll be bumped up to something a little more severe. Its behavior is pretty simple; on its own, the boss would be easy to defeat. To make things more interesting, every once in a while (when the boss loses a certain fraction of its health) the room’s one platform will narrow, and the boss will speed up a little; from personal experience I can say that even with the boss nerfed to only do a little damage on contact, this makes for a challenging fight.
From an aesthetic perspective, the background degrades as the fight progresses to add to the atmosphere. The UI also changes in a bit of an odd way: the status and minimap indicators fade away to leave only the boss’s health bar and your arsenal of weapons to fight it with.
Still not sure what to name this guy.
Tiers
I’ve talked about the gameplay and aesthetics and UI a lot, but in the 89 days this devlog’s been here for, I’ve only briefly touched on the actual “storyline” of Labyrinth. This is for a reason; this game isn’t meant to have a complicated plot, or really any sort of dialog even. Programming has been a little more natural for me than visuals; this game is meant as a chance to focus on the aesthetic side of game development without having to worry about a story or characters with narrative. However, like any game, Labyrinth does have a flow to its gameplay.
The maze is divided into ‘tiers’ which progress towards the bottom of the map. In each tier there are different puzzles to solve and quests, along with a slew of enemies to fight to collect new weapons, potions, (armor?), etc. Eventually the player will get their hands on a key. Tiers are separated by a stretch of lava that runs across the width of the maze - somewhere in the middle lies a way through. A key will get you in, but you’ll need a little more than that to make it to the other side.
Try it out!
This is my first significant project; I’ve never actually gotten this far with a game. Any suggestions, constructive criticism, bug reports, or just general feedback would be much appreciated!
Here are the demo builds:
Labyrinth (OS X)
Labyrinth (Windows)
Labyrinth (Linux)
Keys:
- WASD for movement
- M to open the minimap
- Arrow keys for the inventory (you’ll figure it out)
- Space to use an item
- B to warp to the boss fight, if you’re impatient and really want to try that out
